There isn’t exactly a good way to put this delicately, but Wednesday’s exhibition match between D.C. United and AC Milan is not enjoying the best timing.
D.C. is a horrible 1-8, and Milan players probably don’t want to be anywhere but on vacation. Instead, both teams are here in Washington and will face each other Wednesday evening. More than 22,000 tickets have already been sold.
But after the Italian club trained this morning, it was made clear that Ronaldinho wasn’t going to talk about being snubbed by the Brazilian World Cup team and shouldn’t be asked – a pretty important directive, as it were, since he skipped out on the media anyway.
At least Clarence Seedorf speaks English, and he doesn’t mince words either.
Asked about the difficult of being motivated for the team’s postseason US tour, Seedorf responded, “We’re not motivated. We’re just not motivated, but we are professionals, and we’re going to try to entertain the people, that’s the most important thing, and make sure we can get the best out of the game, coming out with no injuries, of course.
“We know how to play this, and we don’t have any other goals than to just make sure we can entertain the people. Motivations are very low because it’s the end of the season. We don’t have anything anymore to play for. But we play for the play, and we’re definitely going to try to entertain them.”
He was then asked about giving the Washington fans a chance to see the best of the best: “You won’t see the best of the best in this game. To see the best of the best, you need to be in Europe during the season when everybody’s top fit and highly motivated. As I said, this is just an exhibition game, this is just to give a chance to the people to see AC Milan in front close, not on television, and keep the relationship more than anything because I think the people know exactly what type of place we are and what the level of AC Milan is normally. But expectations shouldn’t be too high because we have some new players who’ve never played with us just to fill the gaps of the players who when to the World Cup. We’re here to entertain and to make sure there’s a good exhibition game for both teams, and of course, we don’t want to lose.”
Whew, gotta be thankful for the last part, right?
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